and sparkles
diamond white; tiny fishes switched themselves against the current with
quivering tails; the shaggy margins were flecked with sunshine, and
beautiful with columbines, violets, arbutus, and houstonias. Fragments
of rock and large pebbles interrupted its flow and deepened its mellow
song; above it brooded the twilight of the tall pines and walnuts,
responding to its merriment with solemn murmurings. What playfellow is
more inexhaustible than such a brook, so full of life, of motion, of
sound and color, of variety and constancy. A child welcomes it as an
answer to its own soul, with its mystery and transparency, its bounded
lawlessness, its love of earth and its echoes of the sky. In winter our
brook had a new charm: it ran beneath a roof of ice, often mounded with
snow; its voice sounding cheerful as ever in those inscrutable caverns,
as if it discoursed secret wonders of fairy-land, and carried treasures
of the elves and gnomes. Zero, with his utmost rigors, could not still
its speech for a day or fix his grip upon those elastic limbs. Indeed,
the frosty god conspired with it for our delight; building crystal
bridges, with tracery of lace delicater than Valenciennes, and spangled
string-pieces, and fretted vaultings, whimsical sierras, stalactite and
stalagmite. An icicle is one of those careless toys of nature which
the decorative art of man imitates in vain. They are among the myriad
decorations of children's palaces.

To Tanglewood, as we called it, at all seasons of the year, came
Hawthorne and his wife and children. In spring there was the issuing
forth of the new life from beneath the winter coverlid; the first
discovery of sociable houstonias, and the exquisite tints and fragrance
of the mayflower on its dark, bearded stalk. When June became perfect,
and afterwards till nuts were ripe, my father loved to lie at full
length upon the mossy and leaf-strewn floor, looking up at the green
roof, the lofty whispering-gallery of vaulted boughs, with its azure
lattices and descending sunlight-shafts; wrapped in imaginings some of
which were afterwards to delight the world; but many more of them, no
doubt, were fated to join the glorious company of untold tales. Beside
him sat our mother, on a throne which we had fashioned for her from the
upright stump of a tree; round about them played the little girl and
boy. They brought all the treasures which this wonderfully affluent
world afforded: flowers in all season